The real stories from inside the F1 paddock

Notebook from Pest

Not everyone knows that the city of Budapest was actually two cities: Buda and Pest, and that the names were pushed together forever when the two settlements engulfed one another. Buda is hilly and on the western side of the Danube; Pest is flat and on the eastern bank. Clearly the people of Pest (Pests?) lost out in the deal, as they lost their capital letter.

Anyway, the paddock in Hungary is a fair way inland from the beautiful brown Danube, in the Gödöllői Dombvidék (try saying that after a bottle of red). These are low sandy hills and in the summer they tend to be hot and sweaty, unless they are being battered by torrential rain storms.

The Hungarian weekend was dominated by much twitter-pattering about track limits, radio calls and, latterly, yellow flags. It was all fairly mundane stuff, but it filled the column inches of many a website and featured strongly in the jibber-jabber of the TV commentators. There was surprisingly little chit-chat about the departure of Sauber from Sauber, nor Nico Rosberg’s signature on another Mercedes contract. The question of the F1 halo continues to float above the paddock, although, for the life of me, I do not understand how there can be any halos in F1, given the paucity of saintly figures and other holy people. We will know more only after a meeting next Thursday when the final details will (hopefully) fall into place. Personally, I don’t see how they have a choice. Once you put a halo on an F1 car and run it around a bit and then tell everyone it is the next big thing for safety, you have created (perhaps deliberately) a liability problem. If the halo is not adopted and someone now gets hurt (or worse) by flying debris, the FIA and the team involved will be wide open to negligence claims, as there will be a clear argument that they had a solution, but chose not to employ it. Thus, I fear, F1 is stuck with the ugly halo in the short term. Hopefully, this will result in lots of controversy (people saying: “Yuk!”,”Ghastly!” and “I’m never watching Formula 1 again”) and then the FIA will rush to find a proper (and sexy) solution to the question of head protection. It is nonsensical to argue that heads should not be protected, but it would be better to have a full solution. The halo is not a bad concept, but it makes F1 cars look like some kind of Chris Evans character in the movie Cars, and it leaves gaps (quite literally) in terms of protecting the heads. The jet fighter cockpit is probably the sexiest solution, as we saw when McLaren produced its F1 concept car last winter (MP4-X), but it does have drawbacks that need to be carefully addressed. If these things work for jet fighters, they must be able to work for F1 cars.

With five races in seven weekends behind them, a lot of the people in F1 were feeling rather weary in Hungary, particularly as the dismantle/build for Budapest/Hockenheim (which is going on as I write) is by no means an easy one.
It was odd to see that on Sunday Bernie Ecclestone had left Hungary and was not present for the race itself (or at least the grid), but today it has emerged why this happened. Most of us think that being rich is the answer to all our wildest dreams, but there are downsides to it as well… and kidnapping is a nasty business.

There were some discussions during the Budapest weekend about the 2017 calendar and suggestions that teams are soon going to start switching over to rotating crews (which has been talked about for years). The bad news is that there is no sign of any change ahead. The plan for 2017 appears to be a calendar which is pretty much the same as this year. The teams are believed to be pressing for a few subtle changes to make their lives easier, with more races being twinned intelligently and, for example, the Canada-Baku back-to-back being reversed, so that everyone gains eight hours, rather than losing them. These may seem small things, but they make a big difference in terms of human performance. There is a lot of interesting work going on at the moment inside teams to help meet the demands being put on the crews by the calendar. At the same time it was interesting to hear several teams saying, publicly, that they are finding it hard to keep staff on the race teams because it means too much time away from home. There seems to be little likelihood that any of the races will drop out. The problems in Italy will be solved. It looks like Hockenheim will get the German race full-time and the Formula One group will become the promoter, keeping all revenues, including all the local subsidies. There are some questions about Austin, but a contract is a contract and it makes more sense to hold the event and make no money than not hold the event and pay for it.

The one subject of gossip in the paddock in relation to drivers was the future of Rio Haryanto. There have been signs for some time that the chirpy Indonesian does not have the money needed to complete the season and Manor cannot afford to let that slide. There are several solutions: the obvious one being to put reserve driver Alex Rossi in the car. The Indy 500 winner was supposed to appear in the paddock in Budapest, but he did not show up, although one should not read too much into that because there was a problem with planes being cancelled in Columbus, Ohio, which meant that Alex would not have got to Budapest until late Saturday afternoon and there wasn’t much point in doing that as he has to be back in Ohio next weekend, for the IndyCar event at Mid-Ohio. So Alex went to Indianapolis to watch NASCAR instead (although it seems this was a lonely experience as the grandstands were almost empty), but he had a break from his endless travel schedule. The reason that Rossi makes sense is that he is still believed to have some backers keen to help him in F1 and he knows the team. There would be no need for a period of adjustment nor any learning phase. He could do the last six races of the F1 season as his IndyCar schedule ends a week before Malaysia and he could then do Japan, Austin, Mexico, Brazil and Abu Dhabi. Even better news is the fact that he raced for Manor in all of these races last year (barring Abu Dhabi), so he would not need to learn the circuits and thus would be better placed to score points, if an opportunity presented itself. From his point of view, this would offer the opportunity to make an impact in F1 going into the winter break and that could help him get a drive with Manor (or someone else) in 2017. If that fails he can always go back to IndyCar next year as the Indy 500 winner is always a man in demand, particularly if you are engine supplier Honda. The Japanese firm is not in a position to provide more F1 engines in 2017, otherwise Rossi might be in a very good place. Who knows? The Honda engines are improving all the time and a Honda second team in 2018 is not impossible…

However, there are other options. It might be a good idea (from a financial point of view) for the team to do a deal with Mercedes-Benz to help reduce its engine bills, as Mercedes is clearly keen to get Esteban Ocon up to speed in F1. Ocon is quite a talent (he gave Max Verstappen a hard time in Formula 3) and while he is officially “on loan” to Renault at the moment, he wears a metaphorical Mercedes teeshirt beneath his Renault overalls. The French team has been using Esteban in FP1 sessions, but Mercedes recently used him at the Silverstone test. Mercedes may want to see him up against Pascal Wehrlein at Manor in 2017, as this would be a good driver pairing for the Mercedes F1 team in 2019 – if Lewis and Nico move on (or need to be moved on).

The other man who might be seen in the Manor is Stoffel Vandoorne. McLaren wants him pin-sharp in F1 in 2017 and so mileage this year in F1 races would be helpful. Stoffel has been racing in Super Formula in Japan, but the car has been horridly unreliable and he has gained little thus far from that experience. The only real question mark is whether McLaren is willing to pay for him, although one can imagine that Mercedes might object to a Honda driver getting to play with a Mercedes engine. McLaren has still to decide (officially) if Stoffel is in the F1 team next year, but there are signs that Jenson Button is quietly packing a parachute (a Union Jack design, of course) and will float down and land somewhere near Grove, fairly soon. This means that Felipe Massa may be in need of a new job and there has been some talk that he might be chatting to people at Enstone, where experience in top teams might be useful.

Finally, it’s bad news for Apple fans. I hear that the Californian firm has finished looking at F1 and concluded that they are not going to push ahead with the discussions. When it comes to the sale of F1, I hear there has been one other change in the negotiations, with whispers that John Malone’s Liberty Media may be back in the bidding, against the ever-present Stephen Ross consortium. The negotiations currently centre on whether or not CVC and/or Donald Mackenzie (the CVC chairman) continue as minor F1 shareholders in the future, or whether they get thrown out with the bath water. Mackenzie, it seems, is rather taken by the F1 lifestyle and wants to play on, particular as he has to retire from CVC shortly, unless he get the firm to change its rules.

Someone said to me in Budapest that it would be a good moment for the Formula One group to buy Formula E, before the electric series gets to be more successful. That might help produce more profits for all concerned (in the long term) but it could end up with the ironic situation of Formula E buying Formula One. The largest shareholder in the Hong Kong-based Formula E Holdings Ltd is none other than the aforementioned Malone, although it should be added that this does not mean that he has a majority shareholding in the electric championship.

Apart from being ugly and hindering the drivers view the halo isn’t going to completely shield the driver anyway. A Justin Wilson or Felipe Massa accident would still happen. Flying debris coming into the cockpit and hitting the driver is still possible.

I see two issues with McLaren.
Are Honda listening and learning from what they’re being told by the drivers/team?
Do McLaren still have separate chassis design teams, who make alternative years’ cars?
Sorry, make that 3. Is Ron still interferring with the team? I can’t help but notice that when he’s at a race, it heralds problems – all too often finger problems. I can’t help but wonder if he spends too much time breathing down the necks of the engineers, badgering about how they’ve arranged their toolkit, which takes their mind off the job in hand.

Ocon did more than give Verstappen a hard time in F3. He beat Max to the title! Any chance we might see the runner up that season, Tom Blomqvist in an F1 car any time soon (AFAIK he has yet to even test one despite some strong performances in DTM this season)?

On the Apple news, fans of the company are more likely breathing a sigh of relief as opposed to regarding the latest development negatively. F1 has more to benefit from Apple’s involvement than Apple do from F1 – which ultimately is the conclusion, in their wisdom, the Apple senior management came to.

I can’t work out your comments about Apple but personally I’m disappointed about F1 not working with them. Many Apple fans get very possessive about ‘their’ company (I’ve been an Apple user for many years by the way) but I would thought it was a good fit, at least in terms of image. Too American I guess to understand it all.

Apple currently has a very clean positive image. Something F1 would benefit from. F1 on the other hand, given its propensity to fleece every cent and penny from race organizers, fans and even the competitors, not to mention its willingness to forsake traditional historic venues for races in countries with dubious reputations (e.g. Russia and Azerbaijan), as well as having a team owner who has fled his native country after being served various notices by government agencies to face multiple charges, oh and then there’s the issue of the commercial rights holder facing an EU commission on the division of revenues and drawing up of rules as being “unfair and unlawful”, is fraught with a tarnished image crisis that could potentially damage the Apple brand via association.

I think you’ll find Apple are not too embarrassed to sell their products anywhere, including Russia. The list of Apple’s misdemeanours is long and includes tax avoidance and irregularities in production (see Foxconn). Nobody’s perfect, not even Apple.

Very true and valid facts. I was referring to the brand and image of Apple as opposed to their actual practices. A company the size of Apple will no doubt have some skeletons in their closet however that is not how they are perceived. F1 on the other hand…

Sad to read that the halo *ugh, pass the sick bucket* is being jammed into the regs in its current form. It just feels like a knee-jerk response that has been ill-conceived, not thoroughly tested, and.. does it provide a solution, both legal and in terms of safety? If taken Massa’s spring-in-face incident; I seem to recall that the projectile hit him slightly on one side so a halo may not have offered any protection. Therefore, God forbid, if the same happened but with a Halo installed, surely a good lawyer could argue that the safety system did not provide sufficient safety. So incoming is a safety system with questionable safety features, legally dubious parameters, and the ability to make fans puke – but, at least, without the powers to cause a safety car in Singapore. *Sigh* little wonder Apple said no thanks.

On a lighter note, I really enjoyed the rain footage during qualifying. The combination of HD and super-slow motion provides excellent viewing in terms of aesthetics and a peak into the aerodynamic dark magic of the cars.

well Joe you are right,I will 100% guaranteed not be watching F1 next year if the cars run with the ‘Halo’, I will watch Melbourne to see it on all the cars. First race Adelaide 1987, last race Melbourne 2017. Has a nice ring to it.

Something I wrote on your blog a couple of years ago. Was that I foresaw a merger between Formula 1 and Formula E. I also saw and still do see Alejandro Agag as Mr E’s successor.

Note your response!

There is no stopping electric vehicles in the wider world and no stopping electric racing. Even if Formula E itself doesn’t ultimately succeed, given time Formula 1 will become an all electric series anyway. Formula 1 remember is a class of racing and that class changes its rules and regulations periodically and has done since its inception. Nothing in its make up says it can’t be all electric.

Unfortunately it is not possible to walk the old track. The Jim Clark memorial can be easily reached by following the pedestrian path around the track. The nearest grandstand is Nordtribune C. It is located near the right-hand turn where the circuit deviates from the old track.

Joe, I really hope that what you say about Button going to Williams is not true. I would much rather see the team spend the cash they have on getting someone to sort out their car issues than paying a high price for a driver that’s had his day and really should be retiring.

It may not be so much of the revenues Button brings to the Williams rather the diminishing equivalent revenues brought by the individual he’s replacing. Brazil are in an economic trough which is probably hurting Massa’s personal sponsorship portfolio and therefore his chances of retaining his seat.

I really don’t think Jenson has had his day at all. He keeps Alonso honest and, most importantly, has plenty of experience. If next year’s cars are as fast as predicted I anticipate some of the younger end of the field struggling with the sheer physicality of the beasts. Jenson is very well equipped to deal with this given he drove them when they were fast in the past, and even more so with his triathlete experience.

I won’t name names but did observe one deservedly highly rated younger drivers struggling to get out of his car towards the end of a day of Barcelona winter testing this year. That with a car cornering with significantly less g-force than next year and in cooler temperatures than most races. I like to think us older dogs have a bit more stamina!

Joe’s point about the value Jenson brings is also well known as he is one of the more eloquent and charismatic of the driver’s when entertaining partners (in Ronspeak).

My only concern with him is his recent comments when asked whether he would be in F1 in 2017 “If I want to. The question is whether I want to or not. At the moment I don’t know the answer.” However if I understand this correctly he merely means he is not interested in a drive if it is only to make up the numbers.

If Button has had his day then so has Alonso. Unless I’m mistaken they’ve been pretty close in both qualifying and races and when the car was competitive they’ve both done a good job. Jenson has definitely still got it. It’ll just be a shame if he endures these two years of growing pains with Honda then leaves as they come good next year… which looks likely.

It seems plain to me that the Halo device does not protect the driver’s head from directly above, nor would it from a wheel /hub assy still attached to a suspension or steering arm from any angle. (The arm would not be stopped by the halo unless the hub end struck first)
More importantly though is the nature of the test, as the only detail I have seen shows a stationary wheel being flung by an air cannon. The test widely available to be seen, does not include the wheel rotating at track speed or any effect of precession. The former may increase the impact by many times (e=mv sqd) at an angle which may be at up to 90 degrees from the direction of travel of the errant wheel assy. Precession may add or detract energy from the final effective vector of the impact. (This should be easy enough to model for any F1 team though whether the FIA has access to such systems is a mystery.) Obviously the FIA should have asked for help in modelling the wheel-impact function. Maybe the TRRL has the necessary data already. But most certainly the test video does not include two factors which could alter the requirement considerably. One only has to remember the damage done by loose wheels rotating at track speed in years past. ) Oddly the worst condition must be being hit by the top of the wheel/tyre which could be moving at twice the speed of travel, and the least bad by the bottom moving not moving at all in theory unless it hit something else first the travel (also assuming the rated of decay of motion and rotation coincide) (Can’t wait for the comments back on this one, and yes I know I have still left out other forces and assumed the wheel axis horizontal, that is why I mentioned precession should be added )

A wheel detached by a crash is very unlikely to be rotating at track speed. it would most likey to have stopped rotating at the moment of impact. If it were to be thrown back onto the track it would gain some rotation by frictional contact with the track as it bounces, but the rpm would be modest. The only time a wheel could travel at track speeds is if it came off as the car was in motion on the track. It would then be going at the same speed in the same direction as the following cars, and unlikely to hit them. Precession is the changing angle of the axis of a rotating object, and so is not an issue in the object’s kinetic energy.
The danger comes when a fast moving car hits a slowly moving wheel, and as the speed difference between the two is so great, it would not make a major difference to the outcome if they were moving in the same or different directions.
Also, let’s not forget that a moving wheel is a deadly hazard to marshalls, at any speed.

Yes I know what precession is, it will add another vector to the impact either adding or subtracting to the effective final impact.

Basically you think the air cannon wheel/tyre test is ok. I think it is seriously inadequate.
As for ” it would most likey to have stopped rotating at the moment of impact.” it would depend on all the elements of the impact. We have seen wheels torn off and rotating with increased energy due to the initial crash impact. Forces sufficiently great to break the restraining tethers are likely to leave the wheel/tyre assy considerable kinetic energy, and may accelerate the rotation as we have seen in the past.

Forget Halo the ‘riot shield’ design is better and if it is effective enough perhaps the drivers will no longer need a helmet. Then you can have face forward cameras capturing the facial expressions of the drivers complete with lip reading of radio messages…now that would make great tv!

what is your opinion of Rio Haryanto?
It’s obvious that he only got the drive initially because of the money he brought. But I think (to my surprise actually) he has done well.

Wehrlein got the point for Manor, but in direct comparison, Haryanto hasn’t been blown away either.

And on the same topic, do you think Palmer got a future in F1 next season?
Bad luck and bad car aside, he seems to struggle, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s out of Renault next year, but I have no facts to back this up of course.

It is very simple. There was an announcement. The people buying the team don’t want to make a fuss and tell everyone who is involved. It is no big deal. It is a long-term investment with no plans for any requirement for exposure. There is no logical reason why anyone would object to people wanting privacy: why does the world need to know? It is not that exciting. Those in F1 who are smart are happy to go along with that. It achieves nothing if one makes enemies for no reason. So, the only people naming names and those who want to look smart, when in truth the smartest people are keeping quiet.

You did not watch the race on channel 4 then. Interview with Monisha interview with Dave, uncle tom Cobbley etc. There was lots about it and it was mentioned many times by everyone, you must have been asleep.

Largely irrelevent is right. How does a career in sales & marketing qualify him for running an F1 team? Last time I checked F1 teams are all about technology and engineering. Everytime he voices an opinion on something or leaps to Kimi’s defence I can’t help thinking “Why the hell are they asking you?”

Formula E? E for Errelevant…? am I the only one who finds F1 less and less exciting? All these rules, so and so crossed a line, the other one wiggled, the other one spoke something that ought to remain unspoken, someone entered the pit lane 2km/h faster…some get fined, others get random 5 or 10 second penalties, others get away with it…and as long as Mercedes is out in front and all others are ‘also-rans’ of diminishing degrees of competiveness, excitement will remain dampened.

+1 – the competition is far too sanitized and the micromanagement of vehicles during the race and the drivers when they’re out of their cars is tiresome. MotoGP in comparison is a breath of fresh air – the riders speak their mind on the grid and are not too worried about corporate sensitivities, and no one is too bothered about liability and risk of litigation which makes the danger real and apparent which in turn is a more convincing spectacle…makes the halo debate ridiculous.

For Rossi, so long as it’s for the rest of this season it’s acceptable to go with Manor.. But for next year, what’s available in F1? If the best he can get for 2017 is mopping up the back of the grid, with Manor, well think about it : wet farting around the back of the grid trying to stay out of the way of 18 faster cars, or running with a top notch team in IndyCar and maybe win some races. It’s really a no brainer.

I think the ‘EV’ issue is going to come sooner than we think. The latest F1 hybrid motors may have been a breakthrough in using oil efficiently but there is no doubt that Lithium it the future, for the short term at least. How this all fits in with FE and the spectacle and marketing muscle of F1 I have no idea.

I suppose it’s a shame there is no opening for a team to produce an electric F1 car at some point. Or is there? It’s clearly not viable now but in 2-3 years…..

I wouldn’t disagree with anything you’ve said there. I wonder if any research has looked back in history to see the percentage of abductees that were released versus those that were not after a ransom has been paid. I know that a member of the Heinekin family (of the brewing company fame) was kidnapped and later released when a multi-million ransom was paid. One can also take out kidnap and ransom insurance which seems wrong in itself.

Joe, the approach taken with the halo is unusual. Why are FIA doing such a PR job around it when they could just pass legislation that mandates it? OK… they probably can’t just arbitrarily enforce it for 2017 because it will be seen as a technical rule and there is a cut off date for those, but if they really wanted it they could have mandated it earlier, and they can certainly mandate it for 2018. So why presentations to the drivers to try to win them over, why are they trying to convince the teams to agree to the system?

Hi Joe,
I hope I am not too late with this comment. Regarding Nico Rosberg’s slowing or otherwise in practice I am reminded of the occasion when Mika raised an eyebrow, or was it a hand, in response to a yellow flag and got away with it. It occurs to me that I am in no position to judge as I cannot comprehend the way in which these cars accelerate, corner or stop. The best judges of his actions are probably his fellow drivers who will understand those things as well as the state of the circuit at the time.
Moving on, I often see comments on your excellent blog about boring races. I have been going to motor races for 51 years, not as long as some but more than many, and I always go in the hope of seeing good racing rather than the expectation. A good race is the icing on the cake but the cake is still good, great cars being driven in a way that I can only dream of.
In a sense, F1 is in danger of going the way of golf which is a sport that young people in general do not connect with or aspire to. The recent change to pay-tv for golf will not help it. Can I assume that the pay-tv move in F1 is designed to channel more advertising through the sport rather than through the teams and so make them even more reliant on the sport’s owners?
And finally….your piece on the sad passing of John Blunsden sent me rushing to the garden shed to dig out my copies of Motor Racing. The first one I bought was October 1964 and it contained two Grand Prix reports, Austria and Italy. Is Zeltweg where the F1 glitterati park their wings for the local GP? Also there was the Goodwood TT report, a piece on the fledgling McLaren team, a visit to ATS by “Coche” (A J Foyt and Augie Pabst are in the photo) and a championship Lotus Elan test by John Blunsden. He quickly got down to a time close to the owner’s with more to come. A great issue.
Who was “Coche”? I used to love his reports from Modena, Monza etc. They were a long way off in those days before EU membership.
These days I have abandoned Autosport and restrict myself to GP+ and Motorsport.
Many thanks for the blog and keep up the good work.
John

Ta, John. I own a few copies of Motor Racing magazine, but I’m too young to have been around at the time and too old to regard them as cultural artefacts; I’m caught in the middle age trap.

Perhaps you can provide some words about how drivers behaved in the past when they saw a yellow flag. It seems to me that F1 operates on different principles from the rest of motor sport. When a yellow flag is shown at a club event, it often means that marshals may be assisting a competitor. It’s a simple indication for the driver; there might be a car half on the track or marshals close to the track, so slow down a lot.

F1 is pernickety about marshals and vehicles getting close to the track. F1 is happy when marshals tackle religious extremists who run across a racing track (e.g. Silverstone 2003). I’m not sure whether F1 understands motor sport and danger.

Track limits…I’ just reading a BBC report on German practice and apparently Hamilton was told to take it easy through turn 1 so as not to risk a 3rd reprimand for exceeding track limits and, apparently, get a 10-place grid penalty,

1) Is this actually true? Are track limits enforced during a PRACTICE session? Surely it has no consequence to the race itself?

2) Gaining a penalty during a session termed practice seemed hugely unfair and overly harsh, would you not agree?

3) If this is the case, how are 3rd drivers penalised for exceeding track limits given they are provided with opportunities to partake in these sessions? (on a separate topic I think they should re-introduce the 3rd driver practice sessions to encourage new blood).